So what made her sign up this time?

BBC newsreader Kate Silverton is looking forward to showing people a new side of her on ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, but it turns out this isn’t the first chance she’s had to appear on the show.

The journalist has revealed she turned down previous offers to be a contestant on the BBC ballroom competition due to her busy schedule.

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Speaking to HuffPost UK and other journalists at the series press launch, Kate said: “I’ve been asked previously way back when, and I was off to Iraq, and then Afghanistan, then I was pregnant, and then I was being a mummy, and concentrating on that.”

On what convinced her to do it this time around, she continued: “It just felt like my children are now four and nearly seven, and it really felt like, ‘Absolutely, why not?!’ You know, it’s just the right time.”

BBC

As Kate admitted she was excited about stepping out from behind the news desk and on to the dance floor, she revealed she is hoping to use the show as a platform to raise awareness of other issues.

She said: “I love my job and I love what I have achieved professionally. This is a, I’m looking at it as a little bubble on it’s own.

“I actually want to use it as to talk more about children’s mental health which is another serious topic. So I’m doing a lot more on mental health and brain science next year and working with a lot of psychiatrists and doing some documentaries. So this is like this lovely joyful interlude.”

Doug Peters/EMPICS Entertainment

She added: “I watched ‘The Greatest Showman’ with my daughter and at the end there’s a quote from Barnum and I love the narrative of the film as well, there’s a quote from Barnum - ‘There is no more noble art than making others happy’, and I thought, that is what ‘Strictly’ does. And it makes me happy when I watch it, so it’s just so nice to be part of it just for this period, just to immerse myself and really genuinely have that gleeful joy.”